Saturday, July 14, 2012

Did I Forget Yesterday's Post?

Did I forget yesterday's post? No, of course not... Well, okay, maybe... To be honest, yes, I did. Yesterday, we held our first "official" Team Sidequest work meeting. This consisted of myself, my husband, and our mechanics editor (good friend who knows rules for most games inside and out and has a good eye for whether certain game mechanics will work or not, but that title seemed a bit long so we call him mechanics editor). Way back in the very beginning of this blog, I mentioned that along with Gothic Panda Studios work, I might be posting on the things we're doing with Team Sidequest. Team Sidequest, for those who don't know, is a fledgling table top game company run primarily by my husband and I with occasional assistance from a couple of friends. Not much to it yet, but for now it's run by volunteer staff. Maybe one day it'll become something epically awesome and we'll actually get paid and be able to hire some other people. =D I can hope right?

Anyways, yesterday, we started work on editing the Anime RPG book we published last year (because surely we weren't the only ones who thought it might be fun to play a dwarf magic girl). We're about out of the first print run of books, so it seemed like a good time to do some editing--plus, over the last year of playing around with it and from some feedback from people who purchased copies of the book we have a list of things we feel could be made better. Our first step: review the mechanics. At our meeting, we made a rough list of general things to address. Over the next week we will each sit down with a copy of the book and go through every power, every feat, and every item in the book. We'll each make a list of specific adjustments we think should be made. Technically, I'll probably be leaving this task up to my husband and our mechanics editor, since I've also been tasked with editing some of the art. Once this step is done, we'll meet again and compare our lists of specific changes and determine as a group what we will actually change--these changes will be recorded to be posted on the Team Sidequest website for people who have already purchased a copy of the book. After that we'll make changes, check for grammar and spelling errors, correct formatting and other things like that. Our goal is to have the book ready for a second print run by mid-August.

In theory, by mid-August, we will also have Anime RPG ready for e-book release. One on-going request I have received regarding this book, second only to a version for Pathfinder, is an electronic version. This is the big reason why I am editing art. For the e-book version, all the art can be in color, as opposed to the black and white for the print version (color printing would make the book way too expensive). Once we get the 4th edition book completely edited and ready for release, we'll tackle adjusting the system for Pathfinder. Sometime in the next month we'll also be getting the Team Sidequest website up and functioning as well, so, you know, we have a place to post that list of changes. XD